With the advent of technology, consumer electronic devices have emerged to become nearly ubiquitous in the everyday lives of many people. Many of these devices offer users access to a plethora of features, including the ability to initiate requests (e.g., commands, queries, etc.) using speech. A typical speech-based system that enables speech-initiated requests generally waits until an end of an utterance is detected before processing the utterance to recognize the words of the utterance, determine an intent of the user in speaking the utterance, and generate a user request. As such, the typical speech-based system may remain idle (with respect to the processing of the utterance) until the end of the utterance is detected, resulting in unnecessary delay before a response to the utterance can be provided to a user. These and other drawbacks exist.